Happily Ever After - Girls Camp

I am so glad that I got the calling to be girls camp director for our ward.  It was very stressful at times, don't get me wrong, but I loved being able to go.We had a pretty small group of girls, 10 total, and 5 of them were YCL's so they didn't even camp in our tent with us.  The theme was Happily Ever After and it was all about princesses and getting to the temple.  The camp song was "My Story" by Kaity Whitcomb.  Each ward was a different fairytale and temple.  We were the fairytale Frozen and we had the Snowflake Temple.  It was so much fun and pretty easy to find things to go along with it.    

Our campsite

We had a candy table set out the whole time

The first day after we arrived and set up a few things at camp, the girls went on their hike.  They were glad to get it done and out of the way so we could enjoy the rest of camp.  There was one girl who said she would come to camp if she didn't have to go on the hike, so she and I stayed back and set up the food so lunch would be ready when they got back from the hike.  They girls got back and were ready to relax.  To help them relax, after they ate their sandwiches and chips, we soaked our feet in a pool and gave ourselves pedicures.  We had the foot soak, toe separators, and nail polish.  It was really nice.  

One of the girls favorite times was ward time, the time when it was just our girls from our ward hanging out.  I had crafts and different things planned during that time, but it turns out that some of their best times were just sitting and listening to 2 of the girls play a guitar.  One girl is working on making it with a music career and the other just had a few songs that she knew and brought her guitar along for fun.  It definitely bonded them together.  The craft and things we did during ward time that day was that we decorated hats for each of us to wear and decorated some water bottles with our names on them to use for the week.  We also played several games of Mafia.  Some of the girls had not played before and it was a big hit.  

That night was a fun night for us.  It was skits and movie night.  After dinner, we goofed around and watched some of the YCL's do some of the skits that they came up with.  One of them was Girls Camp Idol, where most of the people were goofy and weird, but the best one was when a girl from our ward got up and sang a song with the guitar and she did so good.  She even got chanted back for an encore later on that night.  So the movie night was a collection of our skits that we made for mutual activities for a few months.  Not to boast, but ours was definitely the best.  We did lots of different music clips from Frozen and tried to make a story about building a snow man and he was a fixer upper then he turns into our prince charming that is going to take us to the temple.  We had some funny stuff in there too.  I loved it and had fun making it with the girls. 

Wednesday morning was certification time with the YCL's.  While they were doing their certification, the stake leaders set up a leaders meeting.  We played some games together and then they talked to us about finding optimism and doing the best with what life gives you.  I really enjoyed being with the other leaders and getting to have some time for ourselves.  

The afternoon was more ward time where we worked on getting to know each other better and building friendships.  We did some getting to know you questions and afterwards we made friendship bracelets.  All the bracelets turned out really cute. 

 

 The rest of the time we played water balloon volleyball.  It took one team a little longer to figure out the best way to launch the balloon.  The YCL's definitely won the game.  We also proceeded to play more mafia and play a little more music.  That night was the night that the stake presidency came out to talk to us.  They got there in time to eat dinner and when it was over, i learned that it is a ritual to have a water fight with the stake presidency, so that started.  Surprisingly, none of the girls in our ward wanted to get involved and get wet since it was a little cold and really windy.  It sure looked like a lot of fun though. After they called an official truce, everyone got cleaned up while we sang some camp songs and watched one more skit by the YCL's.  

The lesson they did was so great.  They stuck with the Happily Ever After theme and showed examples of 2 different married couples, a selfish couple and a more respectful couple and then talked about how we need to prepare for our happily ever after starting now.  Be the person now that you want to be when you are married and only do things that you would want your future spouse to be doing.  It was a beautiful talk and I think our stake president is such a great man and definitely inspired.  It was a great way to end the night.  

 

The next morning, we got breakfast which ended up taking a little while to finish so we sang a lot of girls camp songs to pass the time.  I learned a lot of new ones.  So after we were able to eat breakfast, we had a morning devotional where 2 newlywed couples came to talk about their happily ever after story.  Becca and Chase Adams from our ward were one of the couples and I loved that their stories had rough patches like ours did and made me think back to the times when Nate and I were dating and I still need to have some of that spark.  The girls really enjoyed it.  When it was over, it was time for the girls to go out on their solo experience.  Their time to go out into nature and sit with scriptures and different things to just be alone and feel the spirit and think about the things that they learned at camp.  

Around lunchtime on Thursday, the girls were out on their solo experience and were starting to come back in when one of the leaders came over and said that there was a fire and we needed to evacuate.  So, unfortunately, the end of camp came earlier than planned.  I was very caught off guard since we couldn't really see any smoke or smell it really.  We were told that the firemen told us we had time to pack up and evacuate.  However, some of the leaders got really scared and freaked out so they grabbed what they could and loaded up their girls and left.  A lot of tents and tables got left there because they were so worried they didn't have time to take them down, or just didn't have a truck to haul it off with. Thankfully, our ward was able to calm down and we already had lunch made so we sat an ate the lunch while packing up.  Also, we were grateful that our priesthood leaders were there that day and were able to help us load up our stuff and we had extra cars to put all of our girls in. We were also able to stay back a little bit longer to help other wards load up and also the stake leaders do what they needed to.  It came time for us to finally leave though.  It was sad how it happened, but I was a little grateful to be going home one night early to my own bed.   

The view of the fire from our camp.  It got worse very fast.   We could see the flames as we finally were pulling away.

We decided to make the best of the evacuation and instead of taking the girls back to the church and having their parents pick them up, we went to the YW president's house and finished out the night there.  She is married to one of the counselors in the bishopric and he was in charge of cooking the dinner for that night, so it worked out really well.  We all got to the house and set up and played for a few minutes, then we set up our final craft which was temple blocks for them to decorate and put in their room.  They all turned out pretty cute.  

Our awesome priesthood who fed us and helped us out

One last thing on our to do list was take our group pictures together.  I had a little fun with my camera and a few photo props.  I love having these pictures now though. 

The whole group

All girls

1st-4th years with props

Without props

Cute YCL's

It was finally dinner time.  We had some yummy dutch oven chicken and potatoes and the bishopric wives made some brownies.  It was definitely a winner.  The final part of the night was our bishops meeting and testimony meeting.  One of the things I enjoyed being able to do was some missionary work.  There were 3 of our girls who were either non members or newly baptized so we had some great missionary experiences with them.  We gave them a few things they could read and learn about on their solo time and one girl came back saying that she did everything we suggested to her on that list.  I was praying that the spirit would be with them and that something would speak to them.  Bishop talked about the history of young women's and how we all need to use young women's to become better friends and form great bonds together to build each other up.  Because we had so many girls who we knew wouldn't be comfortable sharing a testimony, we decided to do a camp experience meeting.  Everyone went around and said their favorite camp moment and what their favorite devotional was.  We liked it better because everyone talked instead of just a few.  Even if it was for just a minute.  It was  a great way to end a very eventful day of girls camp.  

Part of the bishopric and their wives

All of the leaders felt the love from the YCL's when we saw our cars the first morning we woke up there

I really believe camp went great this year and I feel like I connected with the girls and the other amazing lady, Amber Beeler, who came with me and stayed out the whole time and.  I miss being in young women's and going to girls camp.  I feel blessed that I was able to go and that Nate was so helpful and supportive to me so I could be a part of this.  I am really hoping that everything works out so I can go again next year.  It was such a great thing for me.